Wireless cellular communication networks incorporate a number of mobile UEs and a number of NodeBs. A NodeB is generally a fixed station, and may also be called a base transceiver system (BTS), an access point (AP), a base station (BS), or some other equivalent terminology. As improvements of networks are made, the NodeB functionality evolves, so a NodeB is sometimes also referred to as an evolved NodeB (eNB). In general, NodeB hardware, when deployed, is fixed and stationary, while the UE hardware is portable.
In contrast to NodeB, the mobile UE can comprise portable hardware. User equipment (UE), also commonly referred to as a terminal or a mobile station, may be fixed or mobile device and may be a wireless device, a cellular phone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a wireless modem card, and so on. Uplink communication (UL) refers to a communication from the mobile UE to the NodeB, whereas downlink (DL) refers to communication from the NodeB to the mobile UE. Each NodeB contains radio frequency transmitter(s) and the receiver(s) used to communicate directly with the mobiles, which move freely around it. Similarly, each mobile UE contains radio frequency transmitter(s) and the receiver(s) used to communicate directly with the NodeB. In cellular networks, the mobiles cannot communicate directly with each other but have to communicate with the NodeB.
Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless networks, also known as Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN), are being standardized by the 3GPP working groups (WG). OFDMA and SC-FDMA (single carrier FDMA) access schemes were chosen for the down-link (DL) and up-link (UL) of E-UTRAN, respectively. User Equipments (UE's) are time and frequency multiplexed on a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH), and a fine time and frequency synchronization between UE's guarantees optimal intra-cell orthogonality. In case the UE is not UL synchronized, it uses a non-synchronized Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH), and the Base Station (also referred to as eNodeB) provides back some allocated UL resource and timing advance information to allow the UE transmitting on the PUSCH. The 3GPP RAN Working Group 1 (WG1) has agreed on the preamble based physical structure of the PRACH. RAN WG1 also agreed on the number of available preambles that can be used concurrently to minimize the collision probability between UEs accessing the PRACH in a contention-based manner. These preambles are multiplexed in CDM (code division multiplexing) and the sequences used are Constant Amplitude Zero Auto-Correlation (CAZAC) sequences. All preambles are generated by cyclic shifts of a number of root sequences, which are configurable on a cell-basis.
Depending on whether contention is involved or not, a Random Access (RA) procedure is classified into contention based and non-contention based (or contention-free). While the contention based procedure can be used by any accessing UE in need of uplink connection, the non-contention based is only applicable to handover and downlink data arrival events. In both procedures, a RA preamble is transmitted by the accessing UE to allow NodeB to estimate, and if needed, adjust the UE transmission time to within a cyclic prefix. It is agreed that there are 64 total RA preambles allocated for each cell of a NodeB, and each NodeB dynamically configures two disjoint sets of preambles to be used by the two RA procedures separately. The set for contention-based is broadcasted to all UEs by the NodeB, and the rest of the preambles in the other set are assigned by the NodeB one by one to the UEs in contention-free procedure.
Zadoff-Chu (ZC) sequence has been selected as RA preambles for LTE networks. Specifically, a cell can use different cyclic shifted versions of the same ZC root sequence, or other ZC root sequences if needed, as RA preambles. Depending on whether a cell supports high-speed UEs (i.e., a high-speed cell) or not, sequence and cyclic shift allocation to a cell may differ.
The non-synchronized PRACH is multiplexed with scheduled data in a TDM/FDM manner. It is accessible during PRACH slots of duration TRA and period TRA. The general operations of the physical random access channels are described in the specifications for evolved universal terrestrial radio access (EUTRA), for example: “3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Physical Channels and Modulation (Release 8)”, as defined by the 3GPP working groups (WG). The EUTRA is sometimes also referred to as 3GPP long-term evolution (3GPP LTE).